• AllNewTypeFace@leminal.space
    33·
    4 days ago

    The sentence should scale with the crime. Nonviolent burglars and minor frauds could be taught Python, more serious crimes could get Go, whereas the most depraved offenders could be sentenced to C++

  • S13Ni@lemmy.studio
    7·
    3 days ago

    I hear they do micro work for mechanical turk in some Finnish prisons. It is optional, but surely won’t teach you anything at all about tech.

      • S13Ni@lemmy.studio
        5·
        3 days ago

        Well maybe, micro work is really dehumanizing and cognitively rough. I hear some US inmates do work at McDonalds and if I had to choose between that and microwork, and if time I spent working was the same with both options, I would take the fastfood job any day. At least have done that before irl so I know what to expect.

        I’m ADHD in IT job, and my mind would explode if work I did with computer was just unskilled datasorting job.

        But I do know US inmates have basically slave conditions. But I read a book about microwork and it sounds like psychological torture to me. Like what they do in Severance.

        (Work without worker is the book)

  • funkajunk@lemm.eeEnglish
    841·
    4 days ago

    God forbid we actually rehabilitate people instead of profiting off of their enslavement and not actually giving a shit if they get better or not.

      • zarkanian@sh.itjust.works
        20·
        4 days ago

        A lot of people’s concept of justice isn’t based on logic. Rehabilitation makes more sense logically, but retribution feels better.

    • bleistift2@sopuli.xyzEnglish
      62·
      4 days ago

      Paraphrasing a Scandinavian who gave an interview I once saw in a TV documentary about the correction system in some nordic country:

      Once that perpetrator gets out of prison and rents an apartment next to you, would you rather he was subject to inhumane punishment? Or would you rather he was treated like a human being and learned how to behave in society?

      • Kitathalla@lemy.lolEnglish
        12·
        3 days ago

        Heh, the amerikkkan answer is simple: don’t let them rent next to you. They’ve accomplished it by ridiculous rent prices, charging inmates to be in jail (so they come out with debt), and shackling them to low paying jobs.

    • pinball_wizard@lemmy.zip
      17·
      4 days ago

      There’s gotta be less cruel ways to rehabilitate people, though.

      I’m kidding. Welcome reformed convicts, to the wonderful and awful world of coding!

      • mkwt@lemmy.world
        1·
        20 hours ago

        No. For several reasons.

        Fortran is older than Basic and C. In fact, Fortran is more or less the first high level programming language. The first Fortran compilers date to the early 1950s.

        Fortran was created mainly for the purpose of linear algebra: operations with (giant) matrices. Linear algebra is used to compute approximate solutions to ordinary and partial differential equations, and this is a major part of what people needed computers for (and still do).

        Programming concepts like subroutines, functions, if statements with blocks and else clauses… All of those were not in original Fortran because no one had thought of them. These things entered Fortran over time as they became popular, and goto slowly became less popular. Syntax from the punch card era was replaced in Fortran 90, but it is still available as an option for compatibility purposes.

        Structurally, I prefer to describe Fortran as like C, but with better built-in arrays, and no built-in general purpose pointers. Not having the pointers allows the compiler to do certain optimizations that C can’t. But C is the better systems language, because the pointers let you naturally express all kinds of data structures besides arrays.